'Pro-Artist' Gatekeepers Continue To Separate Artists From Their Fans

from the the-internet-is-the-keymaster dept

Despite the internet's promise of connectivity, gatekeepers are still working as hard as ever to keep artists' work out of the hands of their fans. It seems counterproductive (to say the least) to withhold finished work until some magical date in the future when platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc. allow artists to connect directly with fans instantaneously. I'm sure the legacy industries have their reasons, but as much as a frustration as it is for the fans, it's even more so for the artists.

At one point, a fan requested new material. "I can't remember [how to play] any of my new songs because they've been done for a fucking year," Apple replied. "Not her fault!" said Brion.

Explain that. Is Apple's label waiting for the perfect moment, some arbitrary date which has been deemed as perfect for dropping her new album? Is there any reason, in this day and age, with all the distribution options and instant connections, for any label to sit on a finished album for an entire year?

It boggles the mind. Here's an industry that exists to sell content and yet shows a bizarre reluctance to do exactly that. No wonder artists (like Drake) get excited about leaks. Who knows how long the album has been sitting on the virtual shelves, collecting dust while the label decides whether or not today might be perfect album-selling weather.

As an artist, this has to be torturous. You're understandably proud of your work and can't wait to put it in the hands of your fans, but someone else completely unrelated to the creative process is gazing at the calendar in consternation and penciling in your album for release at some random point in the future. And since you don't have control over your own work, there's nothing you can do but hold on to your waning enthusiasm and hope that no one at a concert asks you to play something from your still-unreleased album.

It's even worse in the publishing world, where it can take 2-3 years to see your work in print (or an ebook), not to mention the fact that your back catalog is still controlled by someone else, meaning you can't reissue older books in order to keep money flowing in or maintain public interest while waiting for your finished book to hit the shelves.

As a fan, it's frustrating enough that publishers of all types still insist on ridiculous staggered releases and "windows." For an artist, it has to be absolutely maddening. All you want to do is get it to the people who want it most, but the gate is locked down tight by the same companies who still insist they're the last, best hope for the creative community. Conjuring up false scarcity through calendar mismanagement is no way to treat your artists. Or their fans.

easy answer.. labels r jockying 4 release window... just like in movie release.. the thinking is that there is higherachy in popularity of the works and the time to release it for the most profitable opportunity.. don't know what facters they use to calculation this but it's obvious..

The lesson of the day...

Is to self-publish your work and tell the middlemen to stuff their "release windows" up their posterior.

Money makes people irrational. The more money there is involved, the more irrational they act. They don't just want the album to sell well, they want world record breaking sales and historically huge profits. So they get obsessive-compulsive over the whole thing, wasting time waiting for the "perfect" moment to release it so it isn't overshadowed by another album.

record release rates - slowing for decades

Duke Ellington released enough stuff in the late 1930s and early 1940s that the Smithsonian offered one LP of Greatest Hits for EACH year in that fruitful period.

The Beatles crammed 14 albums' worth of releases into a seven year recording career.

When I was a teenager, the release rate had slowed: one album a year was the standard in the mid-1970s.

Eventually we got to the modern era where two years between releases was the minimum, and 3-4 years is normal. I don't know how artists expect to keep teenaged fans -- a year is a long time in a teenage life. When I was young, bands which went three years without a release were presumed to have broken up.

I once read an article in the Wall Street Journal which argued that the culprit wasn't the greed of the record companies -- it was the rise of truly global touring.

Let's see... first you have to make sure any legal issues are cleared up (have all the musicians signed their contracts?)

And then there's marketing, which is so much more than just a release window. Remember that you've been holed up in your home studio for months and people have forgotten about you. It's not like she's U2 and every move she makes generates headlines. She has to get people's attention.

Artwork has to be created. Hard to market music without artwork and photos. Ads need to be created and purchased in magazines and on websites. Then there's planning and arranging the tour, which usually coincides with the release because that maximizes your marketing dollar by offering music to buy and concert tickets in the same ads.

If you're a big enough name, you arrange television appearances, which must be done several months ahead of time. It also helps to have a music video on Youtube. Making music videos takes a lot of time and planning. Getting on television is almost required these days to reach any kind of mainstream success. I think Apple's big enough that television needs to be considered.

It's not a simple matter of sticking your music on itunes and people will suddenly buy it. There are hardcore fans that are on her email list and will grab it immediately, but I doubt many artists actually have enough hardcore fans to make it profitable. You have to reach the softcore and casual fans - who may have heard of your music but have to be coaxed into a sale, or at least told it's available. How are you going to reach them? (Facebook only works if they're your fan.) And then are people who have never heard of you - how do you reach them? A little fanfare goes a long way with people like that. And yes, release windows get people excited and talking about your music. If you're a big enough band, a simple release window can even get you local news coverage - free press! They're not going to say anything about music that's already been released.

I agree that an artist waiting a year for her label to get the music out is a bit much, but there's a whole very important part of the music business that comes after the music is recorded. That part of the business doesn't just go away because of the internet. If anything, it makes it take longer because there are not many more bases to cover.

And about that window? How would you like your music getting released the same day as Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead? I know I wouldn't want that. Why put your fans in a position where they have to choose? Remember a movie called "Used Cars"? It's a great movie, but it bombed because it came out the same week as "Airplane". A few weeks earlier or later would have made all the difference.

Have I forgotten anything? Yes, I probably have because I'm not even in this business and I know there more to releasing new music than just handing out mp3s.

So then you complain that it's all about making money. Why shouldn't an artist try to make as much as they can with each release? I know I would if it were my music. Isn't that why Apple signed with a label in the first place? Labels exist to promote music. I hope the people that own her music do their job and make her a boatload of cash.

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Sure, point taken. Although, while you're waiting to get all your ducks in a row, people are forgetting about you because you haven't put out an album in three years. It sounds like you're making excuses for labels sitting on goods that are pivotal in holding onto the mind-share of the market.

Also, the label isn't doing jack to maximize profit for the artist from the album. The label gets most of it, while the artist gets a small royalty. The release window is largely self-serving because the albums are all they have to make money on. If they can't do that, they're sunk. They're in a fragile position and they know it, so they're being paranoid about when they release an album. If there is demand that you're not supplying, it's likely that they'll just stop paying attention and go elsewhere.

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For all I know they are holding it back because the singer didn't slept with the director, or maybe she talked to much and somebody didn't like it, maybe she murdered the dog of some pencil pusher, who cares?!

It doesn't matter the fact is, the songs were made and not release and fans are at the mercy of the whims of people who don't care about them.

Maybe they hold on to that for 50 years and release it in 2061 as a remaster of "lost original recordings".

Re: The lesson of the day...

The release windows made sense in a world without the internet. Now, the MAFIAA want to control everything. It's amazing how the labels continue to believe that their old habits can bring about new profits.

Everyone has seen the act, they know the charades. They can support the artists through various scarcities.

Artists still sell CDs in concerts. That's a scarcity that helps the artist's bottom line.

Tshirts and live concerts, are a scarcity. Even on Youtube, the result is not the same as live. I've heard this on this site, and I'm glad Mike repeats it enough that it's easier for others to learn from. Find and sell the scarcities that make you money.

And yet, the RIAA continues to fight against piracy, criminalizing customers and showing people how to do it wrong. All you can do is watch them flounder as the world moves away from them and their dying business model. Next thing you know, the US Copyright Group is going to represent them.

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People have already forgotten about her because she hasn't released an album since 2005. That makes it even harder to put out new music and get people to notice.

I'm not making excuses for the label. I'm just saying there's a lot of work to be done to release an album besides just sticking mp3s on itunes.

Now we don't know the whole story, so we don't know why the music hasn't been released, or why it's been six years since the last album, so we're demonizing labels without knowing the whole story just because it fits into the mantra of this website.

And yes, the label makes money on sales of the music, but those sales are what make people want to go to the concert in the first place. They don't go to concerts if they've never heard the music. I know you think they should just offer the mp3s free so people will buy t-shirts but lots and lots of people will pay for the mp3s.

So now you're in charge of the record label. You ask Apple if you can release her music, and she says yes. What are you going to do to make sure you (and her) make as much money as possible?

Until we know the whole story, let's stop jumping to conclusions. That's what the MAFIAA does. We're better than that.

Response to: jupiterkansas on Dec 2nd, 2011 @ 10:30pm

you are right, this is exactly how most, and i am guessing the struggling labels, still think. The problem is that it is not really working for them. To survive they are going to have deall with all this stuff quicker and in a creative way. the internet has changed everything, the big folk are not in control anymore and the sooner they realise the better. (obviously they do realise it, and now i am talking about everything, power and money, and they want to turn back the clock, undo the internet. but can they, is it too late?). Interesting times, though could get scary.

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"legal issues are cleared up"

That sums up all the problems with IP law, there was a time not so long ago that nobody cared, people didn't need to clear anything, that cost which is just another roadblock for the little people is consequence of a system out of control.

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That no so long ago time was before mass media and mass communications, before a work of art could be copied millions of times and distributed throughout the world in a single day. If we're going to go back to a time when there were no rules, should we also go back to a time before mass communications? The rules we came up with, good or bad, were a response to changing technology.

There's nothing wrong with IP laws, we just need good laws that benefit and protect artists (SOPA is no such law). I guess people think it will be easier to simply abolish copyright than it will be to have a government that will do the right thing, which is very sad. Unfortunately, that same government is needed to abolish copyright, so as much as you wish for it, it ain't gonna happen. In the meantime, let's fix our laws.

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"You have to reach the softcore and casual fans - who may have heard of your music but have to be coaxed into a sale, or at least told it's available"

How do you achieve this if it's not available?

"And yes, release windows get people excited and talking about your music."

They also get people looking for leaked pirate releases, since you won't let them buy a legal copy.

"That part of the business doesn't just go away because of the internet. "

*sigh* yes it does...

Let me explain history to you. There was a time when physical releases could be kept secret. There was a time when people didn't even know a musician was in the studio. This was great, because in the physical era, sales space was at a premium. A record store only has so much space, and they naturally gave more space to the new releases of the week. So, marketing and manufacture geared up to that release date when the most product was on the shelves and they got the most shelf space.

All of this is utterly irrelevant in the digital era. iTunes has the same space available whether you're selling a compilation of slave-era folk songs or Lady Gaga. Marketing is a factor, but this is an artificial factor, there's no need to gear anything up to a particular date because there's no scarce shelf space to get hold of. Once the master is finished, there's no reason not to release it to the public except for utterly artificial windows that screw both artist and consumer alike. Combine this with a market where artists and consumers communicate directly, so fans know that an album is in production, finished, etc., and you're just asking for trouble just to try and attract some people who weren't that interested in the first place...

"Remember a movie called "Used Cars"? It's a great movie, but it bombed because it came out the same week as "Airplane""

Wow, a moderately funny comedy bombed because it came out in the same week as one of the funniest movies of all time? Imagine that...

Maybe the problem was the quality of the material, not the marketing drones' decisions. Either way, do you honestly think that Used Cars would be a box office smash if only they'd sat on it for a few months? Unlikely.

FYI, my favourite movie of all time, and one of the greatest horror movies of all time is The Thing. It "bombed" because it came out close to the release of E.T. Guess what? Because it's a fantastic film, it found its audience and has becomes so successful that not only has it made millions on VHS, DVD and Blu, but it's also inspired several other movies, a prequel and a video game.

Try focussing on quality releases rather than marketing tricks for a change. It helps.

Re: Response to: jupiterkansas on Dec 2nd, 2011 @ 10:30pm

I suspect there are many labels that are doing fine, and artists that are happy to have professional people that know how to help them find an audience for their work (art-sense and business-sense don't always go together).

Granted the big labels may be hurting, and they will change their ways or die (actually I think they're just waiting around until someone else figures it out for them - they've got enough cash to sustain them for a long time and they own a century's worth of music that will always be in demand.)

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"I'm just saying there's a lot of work to be done to release an album besides just sticking mp3s on itunes."

Indeed there is. I'm yet to hear a convincing explanation as to why you can't sell the music while you're working out the marketing strategy, however, especially as we're apparently talking about a musician who's touring and has fans waiting for new material.

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Re: record release rates - slowing for decades

Yep, I say this a lot. When I was young, it wasn't unusual for a record to have its first airplay on Radio 1 on the UK chart show the week it was released and entered the chart (the UK charts being based solely on sales, not radio play). By the time I was a teenager, this trend had disappeared, with songs often being played for 4-6 weeks before they were released.

I can think of many times where I actually got sick of hearing a song I'd initially liked and lost interest by the time they actually offered it for sale. This had an impact on the chart itself - whereas before songs would spend weeks climbing the charts and gathering momentum, you now had songs entering in the top 10, then dropping out of the top 20 the week after. Sales dropped accordingly.

Re: Re: The lesson of the day...

Time for all intelligent Artists to not sign with MAFIAA and do it yourself like I have done my whole life.No band or Artist needs to sign with the devil to make it.
Do the right publicity on the NET and tour and you reap the fruits of your labor not some rich CEO.

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Perhaps it was obviously a good idea in the days when it took 3 months to sail across the Atlantic and Conestoga invented the spinning rim, but they got this thing called the Internet now. I think it and this Electricity thing, will really take off.

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Sure there's a lot more to making a successful album than just sticking it on iTunes, and sure timing the release is important. I used to help run a business selling niche fitness products, and there is a huge boom in these in the run up to Christmas and in January. It makes a lot of sense to launch new products then - just check out the number of new fitness DVDs on Amazon now.

But the point I think PaulT, Mike and many others on here are making is that many of the things record companies do actively harm their sales and their artists by restricting availability, delaying releases excessively and denying artists the chance to build relationships with their fans. Behaviour and processes that were desirable or necessary 20 or 40 years ago are no longer desirable or necessary.

Should artists still release albums (a byproduct of the length of an LP), or focus on releasing singles more often (see iTunes)? Album artwork is cool, but is it really as important now most people see it as a small square in iTunes or Spotify? Videos are important, but perhaps you could get away with just uploading the tune with your logo as a visual (see, for example, Skrillex)?

Releasing music today is more like making a website than making a print publication. With the print publication, everything has to be perfect and finished before it goes to prepress. With a website, things can be missing, or slightly broken; you can add them later. And there can be big gains from releasing something that you know isn't everything you want it to be - yet.

One of the running themes on Techdirt is that a lot of the problems Big Content and their artists face could be solved if the artists were allowed to be more a part of people's lives. That means ceding some control - to the artist, to social media, to fans - but ultimately those who create value in this relationship will benefit.

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And they have to release them on Tuesday.
We only get 52 Tuesdays a year, so one needs to make sure there are not to many albums released on a Tuesday.
Because you don't want to miss a sale to that special demographic who will feel torn between the new Glee soundtrack and that hot new Gangsta rap release.

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"But the point I think PaulT, Mike and many others on here are making is that many of the things record companies do actively harm their sales and their artists by restricting availability, delaying releases excessively and denying artists the chance to build relationships with their fans."

Well they're using a very bad example to make their point here - one off-handed comment by the artist with no back story of what's going on, and everyone's cursing record labels and release dates. This is bad behavior on TechDirt's part, and I'm just trying to call it out.

"I can't remember [how to play] any of my new songs because they've been done for a fucking year,"

So the labels have been denying her the chance to tour as well. So not only are they NOT making a dime from the album, they are denying her the chance to tour, promote the album, and make a living. Nice. Because they care oh so much for the artists.

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"How do you achieve this if it's not available?"

With a well planned marketing campaign.

"They also get people looking for leaked pirate releases, since you won't let them buy a legal copy."

I think Fiona Apple knows plenty about leaked music, but in this case, there is no leaked music. The music simply hasn't been released yet, and it's taking a long time for some unexplained reason that apparently isn't her fault, so we just blame the bad business models of the record industry because that's what TechDirt does.

"Let me explain history to you. There was a time when physical releases could be kept secret. There was a time when people didn't even know a musician was in the studio."

I know my music history well, and marketing is still a key part of the business. We always knew when the musician was in the studio, because the press would announce it. The press knew because marketing people told the press hoping to get some notice about the artist during the down time. So the internet comes along and now you don't have to use the press to get new out, you can go straight to the customer. That doesn't negate the need for marketing.

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To kinda back up PaulT here that it's hard to keep a pending release secret or even the release day ended years ago.

Ancient history in recording terms and in tech term but not all that long ago. If you have to put a date to it I'd pick 1 June, 1967.

The releases of Rubber Soul, 1965 and Revolver 1966 had pulled The Beatles away from the pop/rock they were so indisputably masters of and into more experimental and mature sounds and lyrics. People had waited on Beatles releases before but somehow it came to a fever pitch that began in the winter of 1966 and followed all the way up to the release of Sgt Pepper's in 1967. In Canada, kids talked about less and less as the summer approached, me among them, it eclipsed our country's centennial celebrations. Something was coming, something huge. The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine by that point -- they were one. All that was needed were the snide, off-putting and half grinned hints from Lennon & McCartney that this was going to be different and from producer George Martin how much of a challenge this album was becoming.

When you listen to Sgt Pepper today and realize that they did things back then with open reel tape tricks that are hard, even impossible to do with all the tech gadgetry we have now you can see what Martin was talking about.

The Beatles didn't need a publicity machine, they WERE a publicity machine. I remember talking with other kids as we waited for the papers we were to deliver to be delivered to us and outside of girls, a constant for 14 year old boys, the RECORD was all we talked about. Musically inclined or not. After Revolver and Rubber Soul what could these guys come up with next??

June 1st answered that question. AM Top 40 stations turned off the singles and played the album through the day and night. So did Vancouver's only FM station that played rock.

My parents told me I could never buy that record after hearing the drug related bunk about Lucy in The Sky (funny how no one caught on to the bridge in A Day In The Life) which I promptly defied them on by getting it the next day. Don't tell a musically inclined 14 year old with something of an income that he can't be part of the musical event of the second half of the 20th Century if not the musical event of the entire century!

I spent my hour with my guitar teacher dissecting Fixing A Hole and almost got the chart done for it the next morning and the next afternoon I spent, with some other singers, a couple or three hours figuring out how to play A Day In The Life on a pipe organ with the organist and choir master. Very impressive song on a 210 pipe organ.

My parents, seeing they weren't getting away where gave me the album back that afternoon. I still have it, scratched, pitted, beat up but I still have it. A ruined cover with beer and cat pee stains and coffee stains. It's had a decent life and it's and mine aren't over yet though we've both seen better days.

It's impossible for most artists these days to hide that they're in the studio. Even if the musicians wanted to their publicists won't hear of it. And some bands go in one and live there for a year or more. Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and the like. Metallica too not that I like them much.

That may very well be the reason for labels now waiting nervously for release windows. That month other songs and records were released only to be buried by the avalanche called Sgt Pepper. The Stones Between the Buttons, released earlier that year was part of the road kill and they hurried out Their Satanic Majesties Request in response in the late fall of 1967, both only attaining gold record status. Sgt Pepper was 11x Platinum in the US and 8x Platinum in Canada. The Stones weren't sideswiped, they got buried.

Why Tuesday? I haven't a clue. Though I wondered why the Moody Blues wrote a stoner song called Tuesday afternoon which made no sense even my their stoner song standards. Could that be it?

By the way, if you want an object lesson in connecting with fans you could do far worse than looking at how Epstien, Lennon and McCartney handled it. It's why I say the Beatles were a publicity machine. They knew their fans (true fanatics with that band), related with them and stayed with them.

That together Lennon & McCartney's musical genius shone like the sun and apart they were more like a full moon on a dark night, doesn't take away from the fact that the band was something special. Incredibly special. (Though I didn't like them at the time so were and are The Rolling Stones.)Their Satanic Majesties Request

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What do you call the cameras, VCR and cassette tapes?

IP law is an anachronism. One that needs to be corrected.
If you don't want to that is fine, the people don't care about your views and they are not required, the government can accept that or see their usefulness be diminished.

Re: Re: Response to: jupiterkansas on Dec 2nd, 2011 @ 10:30pm

There are only 3 little piggies right now, they are not adapting, others are becoming the new gatekeepers, you wanna know their names?

Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple and others, there is no Warner Bros, Universal or Sony there.

EMI is gone, like Hanna Barbara was gone.

You see the tech sector has less lobbying power right now, Microsoft damaged that imaged for everyone in that sector, but things change and eventually you whores will go where the money is and that is not with the old labels or studios, they make big bucks but they also spend a lot, they are not efficient and are utterly corrupt to the core and that is why they ultimately will fail.

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Exactly and that is the fault of the company for not clearing things up, it is part of their job to anticipate those things just like even Silvester Stallone could see that could be a problem with not casting the original actress for the part of his wife in Rocky and had before hand recorded a message saying that although she is not in the new film she is still beloved and all that, apparently the record label is incompetent on that front and can't do PR very well.

She signed with the wrong people, maybe she should try Facebook or Google at least those companies have a excuse they are new to the market and don't know, is not like they have been doing this for 50 years or more.

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"Behaviour and processes that were desirable or necessary 20 or 40 years ago are no longer desirable or necessary."

Yep, that actually 100% of the point. Market realities that existed back then no longer exist. If "pirates" were working against a market that supplied the real current market, few would have a problem with them being attacked. The fact that the legacy industry not only refuses to service the real market but also tries tactics the have massive collateral damage are the problems we have.

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"one off-handed comment by the artist with no back story of what's going on, and everyone's cursing record labels and release dates"

The story is an example of the problems with the industry, If an artist is pissed off that her music is not available, then that's a problem. The number of comments and attacks is partly due to recognition that this is far from rare and is an issue with the industry.

I agree we don't know the whole story, but if an artist is publicly calling out the label for not releasing her music, is that not a problem?

"This is bad behavior on TechDirt's part, and I'm just trying to call it out."

Bullshit. It's honest feelings from Mike and people who read his website. No "Techdirt conspiracy" - honesty. I can't help but notice you haven't brought any actual facts to contradict the claims here...

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"With a well planned marketing campaign."

What good is a marketing campaign if the product you're marketing is not for sale?

"The music simply hasn't been released yet, and it's taking a long time for some unexplained reason that apparently isn't her fault, so we just blame the bad business models of the record industry because that's what TechDirt does."

Do you have another realistic explanation as to why music that can be distributed for pennies is not available against the wishes of the artist?

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"holed up in your home studio for months"
"Artwork has to be created. Hard to market music without artwork and photos. Ads need to be created and purchased in magazines and on websites."
A lot of what you mention gets done simultaneously.

"Then there's planning and arranging the tour"
She is not new to this, and you need a release date, which she does not have. I have seen full blown tours come together in weeks.

"Isn't that why Apple signed with a label in the first place?" Because there were so many other options?

Used Cars

Now that I think about it, maybe "Used Cars" wasn't a bad example. It doesn't matter if "Airplane" is better than "Used Cars" - the point is "Used Cars" would have made more money if it were released at a different time than "Airplane." That wouldn't change if "Used Cars" was good or bad, but it certainly makes things like release windows important.

Fiona Apple is a nice artist and all, but she's not the greatest musician on the planet, and it would be worthwhile to consider who is releasing what album when before putting your music out there. There are many more popular female singers in her niche, like Tori Amos, who could easily upstage her the same way "Airplane" upstaged "Used Cars." As an artist, why risk that?

Someone said if the music video wasn't done, they could just put the song on Youtube with some pictures. As an artist, I wouldn't stand for that. I would take making videos an important part of the whole connect with fans thing, and if it took me six months to make, then so be it. The fans will wait and hopefully expect superior product.

Anyway, my real point is it would behoove TechDirt commentors to make reasoned arguments. This article is not reasonable - it relies on heresay and jumps to conclusions based on one off-handed comment, and blames the whole recording industry for all the woes in the world. It doesn't even mention what label she is on. It's just a hate all labels gangbang, with the commentors backing it up with how wrong all the labels are.

If you want TechDirt to be taken seriously like I do, you've got to be better than this. This is exactly the kind of reaction the RIAA has to things, and exactly the reason we hate them.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The lesson of the day...

Just to be an ass, alow me to dismiss the common theories of who Fiona Apple's newest album is being shelved and offer a couple informed theories of my own.

As far as waiting for release dates, yes this is very common in the music industry. However, holding an album an entire year is quite rare. I'm also not seeing a lot of directly competing artists releasing albums this year. Maybe her label is waiting for another surge in popularity of female singer/songwriters.

There could be some kind of fight over content. This is quite common and usualy does last for over a year, depending on how strong the artists convictions are. This need not even be an issue of lyrical content. One of Sophie B. Hawkins albums was held up for over two years, simply because one song had a banjo on it.

Just because her part of the album(recording)is done, does not mean the album is completed. Post-production on albums often does take several months to complete, and having to do seperate mixes for different formats actualy adds to the amount of time needed. It is also possable that post-production hasn't even started, but as Fiona is on a label that has decent income I'll skip explaining the issues behind that.

One final possablity is that her label has simply forgotten or misplaced her. This doesn't happen a lot, but it has happened. Sometimes the A&R rep that works with an artist leaves or gets fired, and a new A&R rep isn't assigned to the artist.

'Course, as the article only states that the album is being with held, and offers no clue whatsoever as to why, these are only speculative explanations.

Also, I am only stating these as possable reasons, I have made no attempt to imply any practice is good or bad/right or wrong. I am simply stating what is. Because knowing how things are actualy done makes it easier to critique and if necessary change things than wild speculation does.

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For an industry that is about to die(i.e. legacy recording labels) I believe it doesn't matter, we just need them to go away and open the space to others, they had their run, now it is time for something new.

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And then there's marketing, which is so much more than just a release window. Remember that you've been holed up in your home studio for months and people have forgotten about you. It's not like she's U2 and every move she makes generates headlines. She has to get people's attention.

Artwork has to be created. Hard to market music without artwork and photos. Ads need to be created and purchased in magazines and on websites. Then there's planning and arranging the tour, which usually coincides with the release because that maximizes your marketing dollar by offering music to buy and concert tickets in the same ads.

You have just described very well the reason I do not purchase any new music from major record labels, and do my best never to give my money to anyone but the artist directly.

The whole music business sickens me. The interesting thing is that my life is filled with great music by great artists and lots of new music. Just nothing from the corporate music biz. I don't miss it one little bit.

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There might be a million bands in this world. You have to do something to get attention. Making great music is just a start. There's more great music than I can listen to in my whole life. Marketing is just getting people's attention. True, it's dishonest sometimes (a lot of the time) and you can obviously see through that dishonesty. But don't think only lousy music needs promotion.

I'm totally with you and your attitude, but is the problem because marketing is involved? I'm curious how you find out about all the great artists and great music you have, because I'm sure marketing is involved in some way.

Re: record release rates - slowing for decades

The 2 - 3 or even 4 years between releases is because artists want to do the most touring possible, they want to visit everywhere they can, and they want to do it "mega". In order to do a real "world tour" these days for a big name artist, they are looking at 18 months to almost 2 years of touring, usually in segments of 4-5 months on, a couple of months off.

Not to forget, that is playing 4 to 5 gigs a week for many of the acts.

Also, many bands are now doing multiple nights in bigger cities, so their touring is slowed further. You can Arena tour the US and Canada and play 200+ dates of over 10,000 a night.

The bands went where the money is. It's too bad that this place means they spend more time playing the same stuff over and over again, and less time making new music.

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Seeing that some artists here are the ones that want more draconian laws and are the ones that would screw you for their own benefit I would pay attention to whom you give money to, just not giving to labels is not enough, those artists still finance ASCAP, the RIAA through other means.

epublishing

I know of one author who has been trying to break the hold of the publishing houses on the author. He quotes pretty much the same problems - books written years ago yet to reach the readers past the gates of the publisher.
The difference is that he has gone ahead and done something about it. Check out www.akbebooks.com
He has been able to reach out to his readers like me directly and the amount of content he has been able to promise in the next couple of years would have taken approximately 40 years to get past a publishing house.
It would make a great example for your topic.

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I know you feel like you are helping people by "explaining" why things HAVE TO BE THIS WAY AND ONLY THIS ONE WAY but that is kind of the point of this entire blog. The recording industry only knows one way to do things (a way which no longer works) but it is time for that old dog to learn a new trick ... otherwise we are going to take him out back and shoot him like Old Yeller.

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I'm not trying to defend the music labels. I'm just saying that sometimes the rhetoric on this blog goes overboard and we need to be more reasonable if we want our arguments to be persuasive. This article and its comments are not persuasive at all.

You're arguing that they should stop releasing new music on Tuesday. Why? Is the music industry failing because they only release music on Tuesday? That doesn't make any sense, and represents the extreme positions taken here that every single thing a record label does is horrible and killing their business.

I don't have any good reason why music is released on Tuesday, except that historically, people have come to expect it. I don't see a problem with that. I get an email every Tuesday with that weeks new releases. If the album came out on Friday, I wouldn't know or care until Tuesday.

The industry has picked a day, and you're trying to make in issue out of it, when it really doesn't matter.

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I never said the music industry didn't have serious problems, just that this particular example is a really bad one and the response here has been pretty knee jerk.

And facts? What are the facts in this article? It doesn't even say which label she is on. We don't even know who we're hating here, except big bad artist hating record labels. I think she's on Sony (but I'm not sure) and that's more facts than this article provides.

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"The industry has picked a day, and you're trying to make in issue out of it, when it really doesn't matter."

Yet again, you seem to have gotten yourself totally wrapped up in one irrelevant issue, and are missing the actual point raised.

The question being asked is not "why is the release date on a Tuesday?", but rather "why does there need to be a set day of the week at all?".

If we were having this conversation 20 years ago, there would be a clear-cut and straightforward answer to that. The answer would relate to lead times, manufacturing delays, radio playlist schedules and the like.

Now, however, your only answer seems to be "because it's always been that way". this is endemic of the wider problem criticised here. The marketplace has changed utterly. "We always did it this way" is no excuse for failing to adapt to the modern marketplace.

"If the album came out on Friday, I wouldn't know or care until Tuesday."

I'd have listened to the album by then and enjoyed it, or warned other off buying the crappy album. Can you explain any reason why I should have to wait the extra few days just to listen on an arbitrarily pre-chosen calendar date, rather than when the album is ready?

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"What are the facts in this article?"

An artist is extremely unhappy with her situation, to the point where she publicly complains in from on a large group of fans about her work being sat on for over a year. It's also not the first time Apple has had problems with her label, which she is legally bound to.

This is very similar to other complaints from artists on major labels, even though the major reason the RIAA claims they are passing ever more counter-productive lawsuits and other legal changes is "for the artists".

Do you have anything to refute these facts? If not why are you complaining about them?

"It doesn't even say which label she is on."

A 2 second Wikipedia search would show you that she's on Epic (a Sony subsidiary), but this is irrelevant regarding the major point being discussed. It doesn't matter whether XL Recordings, EMI, Def Jam or Warner were her label, the central issue would be the same.

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If an artist is complaining about their label, then the label she is complaining about is not an irrelevant detail.

All I'm saying is the article offers very little information, and the comments have been overly reactionary. While I normally support TechDirt, this kind of reporting should be called out, not greeted with unanimous, pointless rage.

Yes, the major record labels are crappy. That's not news and hasn't been for decades.

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"If an artist is complaining about their label, then the label she is complaining about is not an irrelevant detail."

It is, unless we are trying to go further into the matter - which we may do if and when further details are released. We're talking about an industry-wide problem, not something that's restricted to a specific label, and so the name of the label is irrelevant. Does it really matter that every detail wasn't specified above? Does it change the problem being discussed?

"this kind of reporting"

Once again, this is not a primary journalism source. It's an opinion blog, where news stories are linked to and an opinion offered. if this offends you, I suggest you find a source that claims to be practising either journalism or investigative reporting. This isn't it.

"greeted with unanimous, pointless rage."

Maybe try turning down the hyperbole first?

"Yes, the major record labels are crappy. That's not news and hasn't been for decades."

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That's the best you've got? Pathetic.

I can say plenty of good things about forward-looking, customer-focussed labels who make decisions that seem at least rooted in this century. RIAA members? Less so, but you'll find that I do compliment them when they make a good decision.

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Yep, and we're done here...

The real points being raised are apparently not relevant because an insignificant piece of trivia wasn't mentioned by a non-journalist on an opinion blog. It doesn't matter which label was involved, it would be worthy of criticism either way for exactly the same reason. But, this slight, irrelevant omission is all you need to attack TD for some unknown reason, and ignore the points raised in honest discussion.

Come back when you have a real issue to raise, or at least have some real criticism beyond a tiny piece of information that can be discovered in less time than it took you to write any one of your pointless screeds above..

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Considering the controversy that surrounded the release of her last album, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's comment was the kickstart to a similar marketing campaign. She got an awful lot of headlines, fans, and sales when her last album wasn't released.

Looking over the internet, I see her recent comment has generated a lot of activity, none of it offering any more information than Techdirt.

"This is not the first time that delays have haunted Apple’s career. Her previous release, 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, was shelved, leaked online and then rerecorded for its proper release, which wound up coming six years after her sophomore album, When the Pawn...

"Now, six years later, it seems the same issue is taking place—a new album was slated for spring 2011, and now that the year is almost up, fans can only speculate just what went wrong this time around, especially with Apple now confirming that the work has been completed. While she eventually claimed that she was the one who shelved Machine, this seems to be a different story."

Oh she shelved the previous album? Not the evil label? And we find that out after the fact.

"Fans erroneously thought that Apple's record label, Epic, had rejected the first version of Extraordinary Machine and protested outside Epic's headquarters in early 2005; in reality, according to Elizondo, Apple was unhappy with the results, and it was her decision to redo the record, not her label's." from http://www.spin.com/articles/fiona-apples-machine-finally-turned

Yet she let the protests go on? Sounds like a lot of shrewd marketing to me.

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Techdirt, where nobody can say anything good about a record label.

You didn't actually say anything good about a record label (or I missed it if you did). You said they suck and have for a long time, and maybe there are reasons why they suck in the manner specified in this piece, and why are all you Techdirt people just talking about how much they suck?

Or maybe that's your point - you tried to say something good about a label and your post came out different than you typed it? Hm, this could be more sinister than I imagined...

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Ah, good ol' darryl. Trying to sneak in a few posts of snarky wisdom after the week has passed, eh? Nothing was mentioned that the delays were guaranteed as a result of contract, unless you'd like to point out where it does in fact say so.

On the other hand, it's nice to see how supportive you are of artists. Not!

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why tuesday ?? because alot of people are routinely paid on a Wednesday.

Then the content is available in the shops as a new release when everyone has some cash in their pockets, as they just got paid.

If payday is on Wednesday (which I've never heard of, but OK), why would they release on Tuesday and not Thursday? Tuesday is when people would have the least amount of money if they're getting paid on Wednesday.

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Basically there is no good reason, it just is. I'd say the only reason it matters now is because there are a few people that get excited every week to see what's new, but even then it doesn't matter much. And apparently it's just a U.S. thing.